Director's Corner
Director’s Corner: Fatal force
Director Tim Harris decries the senselessness of a police officer shooting a homeless man
This morning I drove to the intersection of Howell and Boren, where a homeless man was shot on Monday four times in the chest by a Seattle police officer.
According to police, Officer Ian Burk noticed a man in the crosswalk on Boren holding a board with an open knife in his hand. The 50-year-old homeless man was known as a longtime neighborhood panhandler by business owners and police.
Burk, a 27-year-old, two-year member of the force, hit his emergency lights and left the patrol car. Approximately one minute later, a man lay dead on the sidewalk.
Audio recordings reveal three commands to drop the knife and little else. Police say it is unknown whether the homeless man ever moved toward the officer. Shots were fired from a distance of around nine feet.
Knowing the power of the homeless grapevine, I phoned my friend Ronnie Gilboa at the Urban Rest Stop hygiene center, located a few blocks away from the scene, to see what she knew. Word on the street was that the man was an alcoholic named “Shorty.” Footage on the P-I blog shows an unnamed, self-identified “street brother” arriving on the scene to find his friend dead. As the frightened, angry, grief-stricken man struggled to comply with orders to show his hands, three cops took him down.
In what moral universe does a man carrying a piece of wood and a three-inch fishing knife find himself stopped by police and, without any apparent provocation, get shot dead on the spot? A universe in which the lives of the very poor have little to no value.
In Seattle today, to be poor, to have no social status, is to live in fear; to have one’s own utter expendability pressed up against one’s nose.
I was hoping, this morning, to find some sort of evidence that someone cared. Perhaps a wreath, or a half-pouch of cheap tobacco left for a departed friend. I stood in the pouring rain, staring at the wall. Two frail liatris stems grew from a crack in the ground to about the height of a seated man. Their lovely, delicate, purple blossoms formed into a dull point and looked skyward. That was all.
When I called Ronnie, she mentioned how, the night that Shorty died, someone across the street from the Urban Rest Stop dropped a watermelon from the fifteenth floor of Cosmopolitan Condominiums. They were aiming at a group of homeless people below. The only thing that can be said for them is that they missed. Not funny. Not funny at all. In fact, unspeakably sad. Unspeakably, frighteningly, sad.
Tuesday’s police press conference was a pathetic display of carefully managed information and victim blaming. Ranks have closed to protect the murderer within.
Unacceptable.
Comments
Thank you Tim Harris for writing about this. I did not know Mr. Williams, but I cared deeply for him as I do for all my brothers and sisters who are vulnerable. I don’t care what the police say, even I with my limited knowledge of self defense could take down an inebriated homeless person without using lethal force if I had to. What the hell kind of training are our officers getting before they are given guns? Really, all he could think to do is shout three times and then shoot? He couldn’t have gotton back in his patrol car and called for back up?
once again, real change refuses to come out against malt liqour and fortified wine . the very resupply of that dead mans’ past neighborhood offering from the white man. but, maybe real change who wants to make money off the homeless thinks its easier to keep his “employees” boosted in confidence when they sell his masturbatorial rants that never solve the problem but just add to the sensational and prverbial fire of his newspaper selling desire that never solves the homeless problems….
how many condo’s are still empty while speculators and bank shareholders are getting capital gains tax breaks by passing the bank vaults denying loans to get a real business licens and acceesss to the 1 st and pike market that never gave John T.Williams local access to the market place…..time to blame bartell drugs and the others who attacked John T william when he had to use the bathroom at 3rd and union st bartell drug store and was attacked by 1 homeland security guard and 2 bartell employees for neediing to take a civilized piss..while saying please when he asked respectfully….then was attacked
end corporate fascist subsidies grants and stop police state financing as if that will solve our problems with drugs and alcohol still gettting a tax writeoff or a pass on prosecution.
The officer had a nightstick, a tasser, handcuffs, a pistol, a shotgun and a radio to call for back-up. The inebriated 120 pound man had a 3” knife. What did the officer need to meet this threat? Ironically this is the same week that the officer who was kicking the handcuffed Latino as he spewed racial epitaphs was exonerated of hate crime. Justice is not blind the the blindfold covers two festering sores gouged out by special interests. It is time for citizen oversight.
MR. CHUCK HOSMER, IF IT WAS LEFT UP TO PEOPLE LIKE YOU ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE WOULD BE LOCKED UP ARE SHOT FOR BEING A ADDICT , BY THE WAY MR. HOSMER WHAT IS YOUR DRUG OF CHOICE, IS IT HATE , ARE DO YOU HIDE INSIDE YOUR LITTLE SAFE HOUSE AND USE YOUR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND DRINK MALT LIQOUR AND FORTIFIED WINE ,OH WAIT YOU MUST BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO DRINK THAT $50 TO $100 DOLLAR A BOTTLE STUFF WELL WHAT EVER YOUR DRUG OF CHOICE IS , YOU MUST BE HIGH . YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. THE REAL CHANGE HAS NO CONTROL OVER THE SELLS OR USE OF DRUGS AND LIQOUR, IN THIS CITY OR STATE ,AND DRUGS AND LIQOUR ARE NOT THE REASON JOHN .T. IS DEAD ,AND THE REAL REASON THAT THE POLICE OFFICER CHOSE TO KILL HIM WILL NEVER BE KNOWN ,BUT WHAT WE DO KNOW IS THAT THE USELESS BEATING AND KILLING OF SEATTLE HOMELESS PEOPLE MUST BE STOP SO INSTEAD OF TRYING TO MAKE THE REAL CHANGE LOOK LIKE I T IS EXPLOITING THE HOMELESS YOU SHOULD BE PRAISEING THE WORK THAT THE REAL CHANGE IS DOING FOR THE HOMELESS .
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